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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

MARYVILLE, Tenn. -- "A CSX tanker car carrying acrylonitrile caught fire just after midnight Thursday morning forcing the evacuation of more than 5,000 people in an expanding evacuation zone last listed as a 2-mile radius around the site."

"The West is baking under a heat dome that has sent temperatures soaring to historically high levels, further drying out soils and priming the region for fast-spreading wildfires. The heat wave is noteworthy for its severity, extent and duration."

"Imperiled polar bears will see a population crash in most parts of the Arctic Ocean if global greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, causing accelerated melting of the sea ice the bruins depend on for survival, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday."

"HAVANA — Like many of his countrymen, Jorge Angulo hopes the United States will lift the decades-old economic embargo against Cuba. But Dr. Angulo, a senior marine scientist at the University of Havana, is also worried about the effects that a flood of American tourists and American dollars might have on this country’s pristine coral reefs, mangrove forests, national parks and organic farms — environmental assets that are a source of pride here."

"SUPERIOR, Ariz. — Outside of an aging mining town in the mountains east of Phoenix, a copper company has burrowed a shaft 1.3 miles into the high desert landscape in what is believed to be the deepest such mine in the U.S."

"Scallop fishermen off the East Coast could soon see one of their biggest bumper crops ever. A federal survey in waters off Delaware is predicting a boom in the next couple of years for the nation's most valuable fishery."

"Just over a month after California experienced its worst oil spill in decades, the state is considering allowing a company to triple its oil production off the coast of Santa Barbara and run the oil through the same pipeline that leaked on 19 May."